


ghosts that we knew

by LydiaOfNarnia



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Grief/Mourning, M/M, Post-Canon, like we KNOW who dies, the death is kind of obvious
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-29
Updated: 2017-09-29
Packaged: 2019-01-06 17:54:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12215898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LydiaOfNarnia/pseuds/LydiaOfNarnia
Summary: Donald Malarkey is being haunted by ghosts that will not let him survive in peace.





	ghosts that we knew

**Author's Note:**

> can you tell i'm a lot in love with skip muck
> 
> Of course, the characters in this fic are based off of their fictional portrayals from the miniseries Band of Brothers, and I mean no disrespect to the real-life veterans!
> 
> Find me on tumblr at [renelemaires](http://renelemaires.tumblr.com/)!

Don is sure he’s being haunted.

He can feel the presence behind him, lingering in the doorway. Not speaking, not reaching out – just watching. He doesn’t want to look back. He knows who’s there. He knows what he will see, and what he won’t. (He so tired of not seeing what he wants to see.)

The figure in the doorway takes a step into the room, and he tenses.

“Don,” his mother says. Her voice is soft, tentative. She does not understand, but she wants so much to help. Seeing her child suffer is breaking part of her heart as well.

“I’m fine, Ma.” He hunches further over his notebook, filled with class notes and facts, things he doesn’t care about and never will. It’s all for his business classes. Skip would have hated anything to do with a business degree.

He was never like Don, not in the ways it counted. He was never content to _settle._ Skip was passionate, lionhearted, and determined to be happy. He found what he cared about, and he pursued it.

Skip would have devoted his life to something he loved, not something he knew he’d be good at. What he cared about, most of all, was making people happy.

“I could be a circus clown,” he brought up one day, the light in his eyes giving away the joke. “I think I’d make a good one.”

“I’m afraid of clowns,” was all Don said, and Skip grinned.

“Well, that’s out, then.”

He was always filled with ideas. He had very firm beliefs, a sense of what was right in the world, and when he saw something that wasn’t, he wanted to help get it there. A teacher, thinks Don. Skip would have made a great teacher.

Would have. _Would have, would have, would have._ The word echoes in his head a million times, the world’s most deranged symphony. He can’t escape it.

His mother is still behind her. Don feels her reach out, but he draws away, draws into himself. She’s used to him being unreachable now, but her disappointment is palpable all the same.

For a few seconds, they are both silent. Don doesn’t dare to talk. His mother doesn’t dare to leave. Then, at last, she heaves a sigh.

“You can’t keep pretending everything’s okay,” his mother tells him.

The words ring in Don’s ears, even after she leaves his room and closes the door behind her. Nothing is okay; of course it’s not okay. They won the war. He’s alive. So many people are alive – but so many are dead. For what? What did they die for, crowded in camps like cattle, shot out of the sky, frozen in a forest across the world? Shot until they fell to the ground as empty, broken shells? Strangled by their own parachutes? Blown to pieces against a backdrop of snow and explosions, the world’s cruelest fireworks display?

 _Fireworks._ Skip liked fireworks.

“We used to go down to Coney Island to see them every Fourth of July,” he bragged, while they were watching the fireworks show back in Toccoa. “Me, my mom, my sister… my brother never liked the noises much, so he’d leave and bring back ice cream for all of us. I always thought the red and gold ones were the prettiest. You know, the big ones that fall so close it feels like you can grab ‘em?”

Was Skip thinking of Coney Island that night in the Bois Jacques?

More than likely, he was thinking of Luz. Luz, close enough to touch, but not to reach. Luz in danger, and the last thought in Skip’s head could only have been to pull him to safety.

Skip always put others side by side with himself. Never ahead, because he respected himself too much. Equal. “Everyone deserves a fair shot,” he used to say. He brought his guitar over to make friends with the lonely replacement with a thick Polish accent. He teased the replacements in their squad, but always helped them do everything possible not to get killed. When he saw other people eating a little less, he’d give them a bit from his own plate.

“A fair shot,” Don murmurs to himself, and feels sick to his stomach. What happened to Skip was _not fair._

If Skip’s fate was to be blown away that night in the Bois Jacques, it is Don’s to feel every minute of it. People told him that it happened too fast. Skip wouldn’t have felt a thing. Don is the one who must live with the agony, the a hole in his chest as great a wound as Guarnere’s missing leg or a bullet between a replacement’s eyes. Don feels every second of Skip’s life, and death. He does not think that will ever end.

He closes his eyes, and exhales. There is breath on the back of his neck, goosebumps prickling between his shoulder blades. He shifts, and the chill shifts with him.

Like Don said, he’s being haunted.

Ghosts don’t fade away just because he wishes they would leave him in peace.


End file.
